I really can’t complain about a long Saturday that took me to both Woodbine and Mohawk. Such is the life of a racing newspaper editor ( www.downthestretchnewspaper.com). In each issue of Canada’s most entertaining horse racing newspaper, Down The Stretch features a well-known individual betting $50 of the paper’s money to try and raise money for either LongRun or the Ontario Standardbred Adoption Society; both of these organizations exist to provide dignity and comfort for horses past their racing careers.
I asked Lloyd Duffy to join us for lunch in Favourites at Woodbine and to take part in the betting challenge. Duffy is one of the most loved jockeys in modern history. Over 30 years from the 60′s into the early 90′s he brought home more than 2500 winners and was always a charming, funny engaging guy with the media and the fans.
Duffy is suffering from a couple of difficult physical ailments, but you wouldn’t know that from his disposition. His sight is very compromised – he has a degenerative eye condition. And he is moving with the aid of a cane.Strangely, Duffy has done himself more damagae after his riding carer than during it. A few years ago a horse that he was about to take out for a gallop, fell on him, snapping his femur. They fixed that by putting a rod down his leg. Last July he got thrown from an unruly two year-old that he was working and landing on his ass, Duffy broke his hip. Doctors decided to put in a new plastic hip, but after removing the rod from the previous injury, they might have damaged his knee -Duffy tells all these horror stories with the same lack of self-pity you’d expect from someone telling you that the local store didn’t carry their brand of dish detergent.
Our table consisted of myself, Duffy, Down The Stretch associate editor Eleanor LeBlanc and paper contributor Keith McCalmont who surprised us all by bringing in 20 year-old racing programs that Duffy had signed when Keith was ten years old!
So we gave Lloyd $50 to bet and after about an hour and a half of listening to his hilarious racing stories ( most of which we can’t even publish because of litigious consequences), he finally decided to make a bet, putting $10 win/place/show on a horse called ( most ironically) Life’s Not a Breeze. And, quite frankly, it just didn’t feel fair to watch Life’s Not a Breeze go six lanes wide at the head of the stretch and then have nothing for the final battle, finishing second last. Just $20 on Duffy’s voucher now, but he sure made a spectacular comeback.
Duffy placed $5 win/place in the 8th race on Tenjectory, a horse that went off at 17-1 in the La Prevoyante Stakes, but he was being ridden by Eurico Rosa da Silva who always gives a quality ride and sure enough, there was da Silva driving Tenjectory from off the pace in a long stretch run on the E.P. Taylor garss course, just getting up before the wire by three parts of a length. it was good news all around – LongRun would get $118 from Duffy’s winnings, Lloyd had wisely put $5 win/place of his own money on the winner and, based on what the former jockey had recommended, I hit the exactor which spit out a nifty $120.00.
Duffy wasn’t done though. In the 9th race, he selected the #12 Heart of Cold, only because the jockey Na Somsanith had offered him a ride the other day in the backstretch. Somsanith had another generous ride in him that afternoon – he gunned Heart of Cold to the lead and no one got close as the filly scampered across the line by almost two lengths. Lovely. Another $120 for LongRun and because Lloyd picked it, I put Heart of Cold in my late doubles, which made the final race rich with anxiety for all of us.
Keith had quietly bet $35 in 20 cent pick fours and was live through the first three races. He had the 2, 6 and 7 in the 10th race and was looking to cash anywhere from $400 – $1200 for his pair of dimes. Sadly for Keith, but not so sadly for me, Emma-Jayne Wilson burst from the pack in mid-stretch with #1 Captain Mark, a 4-1 shot who previously had not shown he was good enough to beat these. In spite of that, I had tossed him in my doubles. The late double of 12-1 paid $213; I had it for $1.
Now it was 5:30 and starting to rain, but I had to go to Mohawk because I had arranged to interview super driver Tim Tetrick who was at the track to drive Crazed in the final of the Canadian Trotting Final. It was fucking pouring ( trust me, that’s a legitimate meteorological term) on the 401 to Mohawk, but I did make it a few minutes before the first race and was easily hooked up with Tetrick who was as polite and obliging as could be.
This guy Tetrick is amazing, by the way. Until 2007, the record for most harness wins in a year was 1077; pretty awesome by itself as it means someone average over 3 wins a day for every day of the year. So Tetrick broke that record last year – by 111. He won 1178 times…that’s three and a half wins a day, every day of the year ( I don’t like betting on those half wins…they tend to stop after four furlongs).
Tetrick is only 26 and looks more like a high school senior than the best standardbred driver on the planet. You can read my most excellent story on him in the next issue of Down The Stretch, which will be at Woodbine and Mohawk by the middle of next week and on-line at www.downthestretchnewspaper.com.
Tetrick did not win the Canadian Trotting Classic; he finished third with Crazed as Deweycheatumnhowe rebounded brilliantly from the only loss of his career with a most impressive performance. Dewey had to leave from post ten and driver Ray Schnittker decided to gun him to the front. In earlier races, in a driving rain, no one was coming from far back – there was probably just too much spray and slop being tossed around. Crazed made a brave move to assume the lead down the back stretch, but in the final quarter, Deweycheatumnhowe was huge, trotting to the front and surging away from the others to win by over two lengths.
I stood on the tarmac holding my program over my head and found myself standing beside Bruce Murray, the VP of harness racing for WEG and we were soon joined by Brent McGrath the owner-trainer of Somebeachsomewhere, the world’s fastest three year-old.
McGrath couldn’t say when ‘Beach’ would run again. Apparently he wasn’t 100% when he won the Simcoe Stakes the week before. He was scoped and had some kind of fluid or crap that came up ( like I clearly understand the veterinary issues), so McGrath wasn’t too certain that Beach would try and set a world record for the prompted mile later this month at Lexington’s Red Mile.
I didn’t cash anything at Mohawk, but did interview the world’s best driver, did see the world’s best trotter win and did chat with the trainer of the world’s best pacer, so it was certainly a profitable night. I was all tracked out by the time I got home, well not so much that I couldn’t bet a few races from Australia on HPI!
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